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Prayer

Hi friends–I spent last Saturday painting our bedroom a soothing shade of gray beige. First there was all that time consuming prep– ugh. moving furniture, cleaning, patching nail holes… and then I set in to paint. So to keep me company, I flipped on a talk by Tim Keller on prayer. Listened to it 3 times before I finished the job and he said so many, many worthwhile things, but the one thing about prayer that stuck with me is this.

“God will give you what you would have asked for, if you knew everything he knows.

Sometimes I despair when It seems like God doesn’t answer after I ask and ask and ask, but God knows. He knows…

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2 thoughts on “Prayer”

Thank you for sharing this. As someone with the spiritual gifts of faith/intercession, please allow me to share some advice with you: 1) Don’t give up! 2) pray scripture, 3) pray for God’s kingdom to be expanded, his name to be honored and worshiped, and for the devil to be defeated. I have seen God answer prayers in amazing ways for both little and huge things. One of the key components is that the prayers are answered because He is glorified by answering those prayers when doing so will increase another’s faith; or the devil can no longer steal glory from God due to unanswered prayer; or God’s kingdom can be expanded through lives transformed by the gospel or the spiritual growth and maturity of fellow believers.

Sometimes prayers are held up in the heavenlies until we press through in prayer. Let me explain what I mean. Do you remember the story in Daniel when he fasted and prayed for 3 weeks without an answer. Finally, the angel told him that the answer was given immediately, but he was held up by the Prince of Persia and he was also going to have to fight the Prince of Greece (demons). When my prayers are held up I start praying for God to remove the powers of darkness that are holding up the answers in the heavenlies.

Let me give you a story to illustrate this. Our church took a mission trip to Cairo, Egypt, to visit missionaries we had there about 8-10 years ago. Our church made some good contacts with a man there who was running an orphanage totally as a faith-based ministry. A few months after our team got back my prayer partner (who had gone on the trip) received an email from this man that customs had been holding a $27,000 donation for several years and the orphanage really needed the money to stay solvent. My prayer partner and I prayed that God would break the powers of darkness that were holding this money up in the heavenlies and release that money to them. They had tried every avenue through the government but could not get the money. We prayed fervently that God would be honored, the devil and his schemes destroyed, and claimed many scriptures. Within one week my prayer partner received another email that the money had finally been released. The answer had been there all the time, they just needed alert Christians willing to pray against the enemy’s schemes.

I would be glad to pray for anything you have specific prayer requests for, especially those you have been praying for, for a long time with no answer, if you want to email me privately. (cantstayoutofthekitchen@gmail.com)